A Ukrainian company has played the enemy in a Pentagon drone contest, and the US liked what it saw. Phantom Defense, a Ukrainian defense-tech firm, was one of three companies whose systems built the counter-drone environment for Gauntlet II, the second stage of the US military’s Drone Dominance program, and has been invited to take part further, Defender Media reports.

Drone Dominance is the Pentagon’s four-phase effort to field cheap attack drones fast, a roughly $1 billion program to buy more than 200,000 low-cost attack drones by 2027. Phantom Defense brought a system that was already proven at home, where in one city it neutralized more than 7,000 enemy drones over an area of more than 100 square kilometers in a year, the company says.

Rather than enter a drone of its own, Phantom Defense supplied the resistance that the American drones had to fly through. Its setup paired the Specter PRO, L, X, and XL jammers with the Streamhunter video-interception tool and a command-and-control layer that detected and classified targets, coordinated the countermeasures, and confirmed the kills. The jammers suppressed drones and held up in heat and rain, it adds.

The arrangement lets American developers fly their drones under live electronic attack rather than calm conditions, recreating a battlefield where a drone’s performance swings with the jamming around it, according to the company.

One map to run the whole fight

At the center sits Phantom Defense’s C2 system, Kupol, which integrates separate tools into a single ecosystem on a shared map. It lets crews run electronic warfare remotely, without driving out to a position, and ties in sensors, interceptor drones, and turrets, the company says.

Kupol reads the terrain and a drone database to propose the best way to take down a target, then logs each mission automatically so its recommendations sharpen over time.

The high-power Specter PRO station, built to shield positions, critical infrastructure, and cities, serves as the hardware anchor.

An invitation, not yet a contract

Previously, Ukraine’s battle-tested drone makers also took part in Drone Dominance. However, they didn’t succeed in it, though some of their technology competed under Western partners. The program bars direct purchases from Ukrainian firms, which must set up a US legal entity to bid.

A Ukrainian jamming-systems maker went to a US Army base to do to candidate drones what Russia does to Ukraine's: flood them with electronic warfare (EW) and see which survives. Unwave company has tested four of its EW systems at Fort Carson in Colorado as part of the Pentagon's Drone Dominance program and has been asked to continue supporting it.

The Pentagon is using Drone Dominance to choose the drones it will buy at scale, more than 200,000 by 2027, and it needs to know they work under jamming, the condition that decides most drone fights in Ukraine.

So it brought in a Ukrainian electronic-warfare maker to supply that jamming, turning Ukraine's hard-won counter-drone experience into the test bench for American hardware. It follows a pattern in which US defense efforts adopt Ukrainian battlefield models.

Ukraine brings the jamming

From 24 August to 2 September, Unwave's team worked at the base, running scenarios that pitted its jammers against drones tasked with protecting fixed positions, moving vehicles, and infrastructure.

The crews operated from three separate positionsat short and long range to compare how drones from different manufacturers held up.

"Our mission was to create conditions as close to the real battlefield as possible," the company said, adding that it judged the tasks successfully completed but could not detail the scenarios for security reasons.

In all, 14 drone makers and three electronic-warfare firms took part.

Four systems on show

Unwave brought four:

• VIHA, which it calls Ukraine's first tactical-operational jammer for directed suppression of drones
• BOOMBOX, built to shield troops and positions from FPV and drop-drones
• SHATRO, for vehicles
• CHOVEN-2, a multi-frequency amplifier for cars.

Its participation was organized by Revenant Technologies, a US firm that specializes in bringing combat-proven defense tech to the American market, and helped design the scenarios using its ties to Ukraine and frontline experience.

A foothold in the US market

For Unwave, the value is a door into the alliance's security architecture. The event showed the importance of Ukrainian, American, and European specialists testing together, the company said, and "such interaction will help integrate Ukrainian technologies into the security architecture of our allies."

Ukrainian drone makers are getting another shot at a Pentagon contract, this time for bomber drones. Seventeen companies, including Ukrainian firms and Western partners fielding Ukrainian designs, will test bomber drones at Camp Grayling in Michigan in October, the next stage of the Pentagon's Drone Dominance program, Defender Media reported.

The Phase 2.5 Bomber Qualifier is the latest round of the Pentagon's drive to buy combat-tested drones at scale, and Ukrainian makers are again in the field, some through US-registered partners, because Pentagon rules bar direct sales from foreign firms.

This time, the target is bombers, the drones that drop munitions on what is below them.

Seventeen makers head to Michigan

The contest runs at Camp Grayling, a Michigan training range, and organizers call it the hardest and fastest-paced stage of the program yet. Each company must bring at least six fully built systems.

The testing splits into two parts: a Bomber Qualifier, which the makers conduct themselves, and a Bomber Gauntlet run by US soldiers. Organizers have not published details of a third mission. Winners of the wider program earn Pentagon supply contracts.

Ukrainian bombers make the list

The invited firms include UFORCE USA Services, Grim Tech, Gurzuf Defence, UA Defense Tech, Skycutter, and UDD Tech Corp. Which models they will bring is not yet clear.

UFORCE is known for its Nemesis bombers. Grim Tech showed a light bomber, the Grim-18, at the MSPO defense expo in Poland this month, and Gurzuf builds heavy bombers, including the Ayudag-6, which recently set a Ukrainian payload record for multirotor drones at 130 kilograms.

A second try after a US sweep

In the program's last phase, the Pentagon picked five winners in each of two categories, and all were American, though a Ukrainian firm had reached the second round and, by industry accounts, Ukrainian designs were incorporated into some Western entries. For Ukraine's makers, the bomber round is another chance to turn battlefield-proven hardware into a US contract.